Red Ribbons (12 page)

I never finished college, but I suppose by then I was happily married, or so my mother thought. In those early days of pregnancy, I should have known that I didn’t love Joe. If I had loved him, I wouldn’t have felt so trapped.

When Joe and I were first married, it was like playing a game of happy families. It made Joe happy, the idea that we were going to have a child, and he became even more attentive than before. He was kind and funny – all the things that made Joe who he was. I suppose they all got exaggerated, hyped, tricking us both into believing the world would be a better place because of the baby.

I closed my eyes to all the danger signs; I didn’t want to see them. And then there was the biggest one of all, the one that I only recognised later. It was the way Joe never held too high an opinion of himself, the way he’d put himself down. It wasn’t obvious at first. He hid it well with others and, to an extent, with me. He used his exterior good humour and bravado to overcompensate for his low self-esteem. I understood later, though too late, how this made him hold such an exalted opinion of me. My stupidity and Joe’s delusion tricked us both.
Two blind mice … see how they run …

DRIVING OUT OF RATHMINES, KATE’S MIND WAS churning with questions about the case. She needed to find out who Caroline Devine was, the kind of person she had been, and if Amelia Spain turned out to be the next victim, what links there were, if any, between the two girls. Understanding the victim, or victims, would give her a better grasp of how each of them would have behaved given a particular set of circumstances.

If they came across as confident but somewhat distant, the perpetrator may have taken their behaviour as an insult and been angered by it. In both cases, the girls were on the brink of adulthood; many of their values would not yet have been fully formed. Adolescence was a time when things changed, when what had gone before was not always indicative of what would follow. If she was right and Caroline hadn’t been chosen at random, the girl could have inadvertently encouraged her abductor. There had to be a reason why she’d been taken. If Kate could work out what that reason was, it would give her a clearer picture of the killer.

Heading up the mountain road, she thought again about the argument she’d had with Declan the previous night about looking after Charlie on Saturday. He’d agreed in the end to mind Charlie – something he never usually minded doing – but she knew that wasn’t the real reason for his anger. ‘We all have choices,’ he had told her. But in her mind right now the death of a young girl and the possible killing of another took precedence. Kate thought of Charlie. She had
checked in on him before she’d left. He had been deep in sleep, one hand resting on his pillow, the other clenched across his chest.

As she drove, she also thought of her own mother. It had been days since she had visited her at Sweetmount, something else for her to feel guilty about, and something else she would have to put to the back of her mind for now. She knew from the text she got from O’Connor earlier that Amelia still hadn’t returned home. Army helicopters would begin roaming the area from first light, and a full-scale search operation would soon be underway. One of her first starting points in this case would have to be the area where Caroline had been buried – the grave was the last connection to the killer.

≈

The road from Bohernabreena towards the Military Road had varying levels of steepness, the landscape opening out to a vastness of lush green fields and mountains capped with dense forests. Small cottages and larger homes dotted the road either side until Piperstown, where civilisation in the domestic sense ended and the barrage of police entourage began.

Kate pulled her car in tight to the side of the ditch; even from a distance she could see O’Connor’s agitation. Things were moving fast, faster than he would have wanted, but the look on his face said he had every intention of moving with it, and all around him better keep up or get the hell out of there.

‘O’Connor.’

‘Right, you’re in for now. Nolan was sceptical, but even he knows this thing is shaping up a whole lot differently from anything we’ve dealt with before.’

‘Any more from the phone signal?’

‘No. The battery’s probably down at this point. We’re concentrating the search where Caroline’s body was found, over to the left and all the way up to the Military Road.’

‘What about over there?’ Kate looked out to the barren landscape on the opposite side of the road.’

‘What about it?’

‘It’s an area of special conservation, runs for miles, nothing but flora and fauna.’

‘Kate, talk sense will you.’

‘The SAC is protected, which means no one is allowed to live, farm or even so much as turn a sod of turf on it. He isn’t stupid, O’Connor. The phone was a mistake, but if he took her up here, he wouldn’t go back to the same place and take a risk on some nosy sheep farmer spoiling his plans again. If he has taken her and buried her, the SAC makes sense.’

O’Connor gazed out on the landscape stretching as far as the eye could see, sighing. ‘That’s some amount of land, Kate.’

‘All the more reason he would pick it.’

Kate could tell O’Connor had his doubts, he was probably still thinking about the conversation they’d had about the timing of the next abduction and killing.

‘Listen, this guy is a planner. He didn’t abduct a young girl in broad daylight without thinking things through. If he has taken Amelia, it means, somehow, he is able to gain his victim’s trust. He will know you’ll look where Caroline was found. If he did see Amelia as a loose end needing to be tidied up, and so brought her out here, he’d bring her somewhere nobody would find her. Had it not been for the second phone, O’Connor, none of us would be standing here even asking this question.’

≈

The army aerial search continued, but it was the tracker dogs working the ground that picked up Amelia’s scent. The dogs led them to an area of raised soil, which answered their questions immediately.
Even before it was confirmed that there was a body, both Kate and O’Connor knew to expect the worst. O’Connor pulled out his phone and called in Morrison. It was time for him to be involved.

Amelia’s body had been laid out in the same way as Caroline’s – hair plaited and tied with red ribbons, both hands joined at the front and the body positioned sideways and in the foetal position. This time her limbs had not been forced into position, probably unnecessary because of the speed with which he’d buried her. Morrison noted that the markings on her neck meant Amelia’s death was most probably caused by asphyxiation, just like Caroline. However, there had been no blows to the head, although the face was badly bruised.

‘Kate, what sort of mindless fucker is doing this?’

‘The kind who doesn’t think like you or me, O’Connor.’

‘Don’t give me any sympathetic psychological crap about fucked-up bastards.’

‘I’ve no intention of it,’ she retorted.

‘Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing, Kate, and from what you’ve already told me, he takes great care in getting the thing done exactly right.’

‘No argument on that score, but there are differences.’

‘The terrain, you’ve already covered that.’

‘I’ll want to see the other site first hand. Even if Amelia was a complication to be dealt with, both logic and intimacy played a role in how this man thought about his victims. There’s a lot more to this.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Look around you, O’Connor. The place is barren. It’s like Amelia was less worthy. You can’t deny the similarity between both girls. I mean, they look almost like twins. He obviously has a fit he’s trying to achieve.’

‘Jesus Christ, Kate. Whatever about the public outcry and the shit we’ve been dealing with up until now, it will be nothing compared to the fucking mayhem this is going to cause.’

‘I know that.’

‘Rohan is going to buy us time with the second burial site, Kate, but it will have to be announced soon.’

‘The ribbons, the plaiting, the positioning of the body, it’s all part of his signature, but with Amelia, apart from the choice of burial site, there is another important difference. She’s not wearing a silver cross.’

O’Connor threw his hands up. ‘Thank heavens for small mercies. Nolan hates all that religious shit raising its head.’

‘Caroline’s parents, what did they say about the one she was wearing?’

‘It was just a cheap thing, like you’d find in any pound shop.’

‘But he left it on her, although the earrings were missing. This guy does things for a reason. If he left the cross on Caroline, he deliberately wanted it there.’

‘We can’t be sure he took the earrings. They could have fallen out.’

‘Maybe, but the crucifix is an iconic symbol, he didn’t leave it there unless it pleased him. People do similar things for different reasons.’

‘Talk English, Kate.’ O’Connor sounded tired.

‘Okay, listen. We have to look at each girl, then compare them to establish what they have in common and what makes them different from each other. If Amelia was a threat he needed to get her out of the way, his intention was to kill her from the moment the abduction took place. Caroline’s death was different. The blows to the head don’t fit, too messy for him, unless, of course, they were the result of things not going according plan.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning, maybe he hadn’t intended to kill Caroline to begin with. But the positioning makes sense to him. He was able to dispose of Amelia quickly, indicationg he felt very little guilt, if any. He is a killer capable of compartmentalising events, O’Connor. Killing Amelia has proved that beyond doubt, and killers who are capable of that are the most dangerous kind.’

O’Connor turned away to answer his phone. He spoke briefly, then ended the call abruptly.

‘Leave your car here, Kate. That was Dermot O’Brien. They’ve picked up a well-known bastard on the CCTV footage from the canal where Caroline went missing, and we’re both about to pay him a visit.’

HE HAD SET THE ALARM FOR 5.30 A.M. GETTING UP early was something he did whether it was a work day or not. The Cronly family had an ancestry of army men known for their discipline, and despite his aversion to joining such a hideous profession, he was more than willing to churn out the family history at times of convenience, especially when such information could put him in good stature. In truth, the surname and the army ancestry came from his mother’s side, but he wasn’t going to share incidentals like that with anyone if he didn’t have to.

Irrespective of the previous night’s events, continuing his daily routine was important. Teeth brushing for a minimum of ten minutes, using the ‘firm’ toothbrush variety with a designated life span of no more than two weeks. Weighing was another part of his routine. He had kept his BMI at twenty-four for the past five years; with a height of five foot ten inches and a waist of thirty-four inches, maintaining a body weight of no more than twelve stone was imperative.

It was still dark when he finished showering. Down in the kitchen, the kettle was full from the night before. His routine had changed since he moved out of Cronly, but of course the schedule would have been different either way in the big house. Tasks such as lighting the morning fire, turning on the immersion and looking after the old hag would have delayed things considerably.

Porridge made with water was a sturdy start to the day. By the time he sat at his kitchen table for breakfast, he felt a soothing sense
of equilibrium return, already looking forward to browsing the newspapers online.

Exactly ten minutes later, he switched on his computer in the living room, ready to pick up whatever details were available. He was intrigued when he read the term ‘Mr Invisible’ used in one of the lower-grade publications to describe the abductor and killer of Caroline Devine. It sounded to him like a superhero character from a comic. Had he entered the world of superhero status? Of course, it wasn’t with candid admiration that the media referred to him that way, but, nonetheless, the inference was there and the language was, at the very least, dramatic.

Unsurprisingly, the story was the lead item on the news when he turned on the radio. ‘Gardaí are appealing for witnesses who may have travelled through the Dublin Mountains area over the course of the past few days.’

Going back to the internet again, it pleased him to find that the term ‘Mr Invisible’ also appeared in one of the more respectable publications. It seemed the use of the term had stemmed from the lack of concrete details about Caroline’s disappearance and murder.

There was no mention of Amelia. No surprise there. It was still early days.

IT IS NOT YET SIX WHEN I HEAR THE BIRDS. THEY SWOOP between dark and light while others sleep. Each morning they are my first connection to the living. In the same way as everything about being here is safe in its predictability, so too are they. I don’t envy them their energy, although the night has exhausted me. I envy them their delight.

Soon, I hear Bridget. She is putting her things away in the closet at the end of the corridor. She will hang up her coat on one of the iron hooks, take off her outdoor shoes and put on her slip-ons. Then she will clear her throat. Bridget is the first sound I hear after the birds. The long night is over, and with this the knowledge that I must now face another day.

Was Andrew the beginning of my madness? Would I have done things differently if I had known? All those years ago, yet I still remember how I loved him, how every inconsequential detail of my life revolved around the two of us being together. The fact that we became lovers was inevitable. But now when I think of him, I think beyond our time of secrets, beyond our passion, I think of how, even back then, somewhere in the back of my mind, I had a deep-rooted sense that in the end what we had together would be tinged with regret.

Before Bridget arrives into my room, I make the decision to ask her for a pen and paper. No harm to have it, just in case. I know this will surprise her, but I have no intention of asking her until just before she leaves. I am not ready to have my motives questioned, not just yet.